Essay in Comparative Literature Södertörns Högskola, Fall term 2006 The Secret World of Harry Potter The Literary Laws of Fantasy Applied to the Novels by J. K. Rowling Robin Watts Tutor: Agneta Rehal-Johansson Abstract My intentions with this essay has been to examine the World in which the story of J. K. Rowlings Harry Potter takes place, the structure, narrative and restrictions, in order to place the suite of novels in the tradition of the Fantasy genre. Since the release of the first book Harry Potter has become a household name, possibly more than any other contemporary literature written for children. Various readings concerning gender, etymological, linguistic aspects and so forth have been done, and in most cases the books are placed in the genre of Fantasy without distinguishing what in fact makes the novels Fantasy. I wanted to see which specific sectors of the books that place them in the genre, and, assuming that it would in fact fit into the Fantasy genre, in which ways it diverges from the tradition of the genre in means of the structure of the world/s of the story. I also looked at the faults in the logic within the novels to see if the inconsistencies in the rules of the world have an impact on the agency of the story. I found the novels to be a part of the fantasy tradition, not only by having many intertextual relations and similar features to other fantasy-novels but also in the fundament of the story, its basic conditions such as the supernatural elements and the hidden places in the world of the books. The minor inconstancies that I found where to small to disrupt the narrative, and the fact that some of the aspects of the books drift slightly away from the logic of the world within the story have reasonable explanations such as making the story easier to relate to. 1 Index 1. General Introduction ..................................................................................................3 1.1 Purpose and Question at Issue .................................................................................3 1.2 A Survey of Previous Readings of Harry Potter......................................................4 1.3 Theory and Method..................................................................................................6 1.4 The Definition of Fantasy, Primary and Secondary Worlds in Fantasy According to Nikolajeva and Klingberg..........................................................................................8 2. J. K. Rowling .............................................................................................................9 2.1 Muggle Meets Magic - A Short Introduction to the World of Harry Potter..........10 2.2 The Plot..................................................................................................................11 3. The Wizarding Community in Short........................................................................12 3.1 The Ministry of Magic, Restrictions and Laws in the Wizarding Community – Keeping Magic Hidden From Muggles .......................................................................13 3.2 Moodys Magical Eye, the Marauders Map and Invisibility Cloaks – Objects with Magical Properties .......................................................................................................15 3.3 Time-Turners – Meddling With What Should Not Be Meddled By Humans .......17 3.4 Hogwarts, Hogsmeade and other Hidden Places ...................................................19 3.5 Floo, Brooms and Apparition – Travelling in The Wizarding World ...................23 3.6 Magical Creatures ..................................................................................................24 3.7 Advanced Magic Gifts and Controlling the Mind – When Magic Just Isn’t Enough ......................................................................................................................................28 3.8 Money in the Magical World.................................................................................29 4. Conclusion ...............................................................................................................31 Bibliography ................................................................................................................33 2 1. General Introduction The story of Harry Potter has fascinated adults as well as children all over the world for nearly a decade, since the first book was published in 1998. Over 300 million copies have been sold according to an article on CBS News webpage on October 4th 2005,1 about three months after the release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince,2 the sixth book in the series. The world is waiting in suspense for the seventh and last book, and according to the author herself, she is aiming to have it out during 2007. So what is it that makes these books so exorbitantly popular? One explanation could be that the stories, though contradicting all common sense we’ve been raised to believe, thanks to thorough work with every last detail, leaves no room for misunderstanding: oh, it is there, you muggles just simply can’t see it. It is very well hidden. But exactly how well does J. K. Rowling follow the rules? Göte Klingberg says that there are certain literary laws of the genre fantasy, which must be obeyed in order to make a story believable to its readers; the author must form a narrative logic, specific for the book or books in the series, and this logic must be kept all the way to make the world (or in some cases worlds) seem like a whole. In this paper I am going to discuss Klingbergs and Nikolajevas “rules” or literary laws and see how Rowling measures up. Could this be the key to her success? 1.1 Purpose and Question at Issue The books of Harry Potter have, except being read by children, young adults and adults all over the world for pure pleasure, also been subject to thorough research in several different disciplinary perspectives. This said, I am yet to find a reading of the novels examining the credibility of the novels, according to the logics of the world that J. K. Rowling has herself built for the setting of her story. Perhaps the question has ended up in the shadow of the intriguing references to history and myth that Rowling has injected to her world, which have been closely monitored and, I am sure, 1 www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/04/print/main907188.sthml 2 Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, London 2005, p. 11. (from here on HP&HBP) 3 has had a very educative function and resulted in an abundance of books with diverse target groups, from small children to adults and academics. My intention is to redirect the attention to the logic of the fantasy narrative. I will examine the world in which the story of Harry Potter takes place through analysing different categories, such as laws, places and creatures by the facts offered by Rowling. I will examine the material (the six books about Harry Potter published to date), give a summary of the laws and logic in the world that Rowling has set up and discuss any prospective inaccuracy I find during my reading, and if there is a satisfactory explanation to the “gap” in order to repair the story to its whole. How well does Rowling follow the literary laws of fantasy, and the logic in her own imagined world? Answering this question will not only tell us something about the intratextual consistency of the Harry Potter novels, but also place them in a context of the fantasy tradition that has been examined in order to establish the literary laws of the genre. 1.2 A Survey of Previous Readings of Harry Potter Many people, ranging from literary experts to children, have made attempts to unravel the mysteries of the wizarding world in J. K. Rowlings novels. In the first part of Julia Eccleshare’s A Guide to the Harry Potter Novels (2002) she gives us the background, and in the second part she explains her view on the psychology of the Harry Potter books, covering the subjects of escape and separation as well as family. I will use two chapters in this book for future reference (see list of sources) as I find her essay on Rowlings narrative technique relevant for my question at issue. Harry Potters World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives, edited by Elisabeth E. Heilman (2003), is a collection of essays in which I will turn my attention primarily to chapter 6: “Writing Harry’s World: Children Co-authoring Hogwarts” by Earnest Bond and Nancy Michelson, who discuss children’s means of “filling in the gaps” and adding their own imagination to the world featured in fantasy, specifically Harry Potter and Hogwarts. Books not covering Harry Potter but fantasy in general, and having relevance within the framing of my question include Tzvetan Todorov’s The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (1973), on how fantasy novels are structurally built up and the signification of each element in a story also in the context of the whole story. This applies to my question of how and if the Harry Potter novels are all “linked 4 together”, i.e. everything out of normal (everything in the novels that is “fantasy”) is explained in some way, either by the general logic of the tales or by the author injecting an explanation into the story at another point. Some interesting analysis of the novels are made by the authors in The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter – perspectives on a literary phenomenon, edited by Lana A. Whited (2002), with essays on different aspects of the books, dealing with intertextual and